Ankara, terrorist attack at pro-Kurdish peace rally: 97 people killed

On Saturday 10 October, thousands of people gathered in the Ulus district, in the very centre of the Turkish capital of Ankara, in front of the city's main train station. People were singing, dancing, and waving flags, whilst waiting for taking part to arally organised, together with some trade unions, by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). It is a left-wing, pro-Kurdish party. However, the demonstration never started: two explosions, filmed in a video, upset the scene.

Furthermore, Kurds suspect that the strategy of tension conceals mere political reasons: during the elections, hold on 7 June, the Kurdish party registered boom in votes, exceeding for the first time the electoral threshold of 10%, obtaining 80 deputies. Above all, the HDP led the AKP of the president Erdogan, to obtain simple majority instead of absolute majority. For this reason, the Turkish leader has called for presidential elections, to be held on 1 November, in hopes of regaining the hegemony on Turkish politics. Meanwhile, he has been carried a policy aimed to discredit Kurdish representatives, ended up with a curfew in the city of Cizre lasted over a week, when even members of parliament were denied the access to the city centre. Moreover, in the country’s south-eastern area, the Dutch journalist Frederike Geerdink has been arrested on 6 September when she was in the area in order to tell the ongoing clashes between the Turkish army and PKK’s Kurdish rebels. Reporters without Borders called it an “intimidation”.
On Sunday, Pope Francis defined the event a “terrible massacre” against “defenceless people demonstrating for peace”. Moreover, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, the American President Barack Obama, and tens of governments worldwide spoke about the facts. They unanimously called for a peace process that seems far away though.